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Except for two or three people, the Vigatese don’t know a thing about music.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo the problem is that it was you, who are the prefect of Montelusa, who wanted this opera. And the Vigatese never like anything the Montelusans ever say or do.”
    â€œIs this some kind of joke?”
    â€œNo. They don’t give a damn about the opera. But they don’t want it to be the person in charge of Montelusa and its province to lay down the law for Vigàta. You know what the canon Bonmartino—who’s a priest everyone respects—said about this?
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe said that if the Vigatese accept the opera, next the prefect will feel entitled to tell them what they should eat and when they should shit.”
    â€œBut that’s absolute rubbish! It’s a beautiful opera and they don’t know what the hell they’re talhing about!”
    â€œYour Excellency, even if the opera had been written by God Almighty Himself with His band of angels—”
    â€œJesus Christ! We need to do more, Ferraguto! The opera must triumph! It has to behome an historic success! My hareer depends on it!”
    â€œIf you’d spoken to me sooner, Excellency, if you’d let me know your plans when there was still time, I could have taken action and given you my humble opinion on a few matters. Now I’m doing everything I possibly can.”
    â€œYou must do more, Ferraguto. More. Even if it means . . .” He interrupted himself.
    â€œEven if it means?” Ferraguto asked keenly.
    The prefect sidestepped, realizing he was heading down a dangerous path.
    â€œI’m counting entirely on you, on your sense of tact,” he concluded, rising.

On the morning of the day
    O n the morning of the day he was killed, Dr. Gammacurta was, as usual, at his medical office. He even spent the afternoon there, after a break for lunch and a brief half-hour nap. But he wasn’t in his usual mood. Indeed, he was decidedly agitated, showing no patience with red-eyed children, losing his temper over tertian and quartan fevers alike, and flying off the handle when, for good measure, a man with a boil on the back of his neck was so afraid of the scalpel that he would not sit still for the doctor to lance it.
    Then, when he was about to close the office and go home, somebody came running for him and told him that the sea had washed a half-drowned foreigner ashore. As soon as he saw the man, Gammacurta started cursing like a Turk.
    â€œGod bloody dammit! You call this half drowned?! Can’t you see he’s been dead for at least a week and that the fish have been eating him up? Call whoever the hell you want to call—the priest, the police, anybody—but leave me out of this!”
    The reason for his bad mood—a strange thing in a man known far and wide as polite and well bred—lay in the fact that, come hell or high water, he had to go to the theatre that evening. At the club, he had made a solemn pledge, along with the other members, to make sure that the opera imposed on Vigàta by the prefect would end in boos and raspberries. Being, moreover, little inclined by nature to appear in public, he had contemplated deserting the cause with the excuse that he needed to make a house call on someone gravely ill. But he had forgotten about his wife, with whom he had had a heated argument the previous day.
    â€œBut I had a dress made in Palermo for the occasion!” she had said.
    The doctor had already seen the dress, and it looked to him like a carnival costume. Actually, even at Carnival, any self-respecting woman would have disdained to put it on. But it was clear that his missus had got it into her head to wear it.
    â€œBut the music is completely worthless.”
    â€œOh, really? And how would you know? Have you suddenly become a music connoisseur? Anyway, I couldn’t care less about the music.”
    â€œSo why do you want to